Google

I participated in Google's Big Code coding challenge and finished with a rank of around 1500. That was a pretty good moment for me because the competition had a large number of engineering students across India, and the top ranks were considered for further opportunities. Google later reached out to me through a recruiter regarding the SWE Internship 2027 process. The first interaction wasn't really an interview. It was a short 15-minute introductory call with the recruiter. The recruiter asked me about my background, coding experience and general technical profile. We also discussed my projects and competitive programming experience. There were a few basic questions around the languages I use and my experience with DSA. It was a pretty casual conversation and didn't feel like a technical interview. The main purpose seemed to be understanding my profile and discussing the next steps. After the call, I was moved ahead for the technical interview process. Technical Round 1 The first technical round was a proper DSA interview. After a very short introduction, the interviewer directly moved to the coding problem. I was given a problem and first asked to explain how I would approach it. I started by discussing the straightforward approach and its complexity. From there, we talked about how it could be improved. The interviewer wasn't just looking for the final code. I had to explain my thinking while solving the problem, discuss edge cases and then implement the solution. Once the first problem was done, we moved to the next one. The overall round was very much focused on problem-solving and DSA. There weren't long discussions about DBMS, OS or other core CS subjects. The interviewer was mainly interested in how I reasoned through the problem and whether I could reach an efficient solution. I was able to handle the round reasonably well and moved on to the second technical interview. Technical Round 2 The second round was where things became much tougher for me. The interviewer gave me a tree-based problem, and this was probably the hardest question I faced during the entire process. I understood the problem statement, but finding the right observation wasn't immediate. I tried to break the problem down and initially thought about a more straightforward recursive approach. The interviewer asked some follow-up questions around the complexity and whether the same thing could be done more efficiently. I spent quite a bit of time exploring different approaches. The problem required a better understanding of the tree structure rather than just applying a standard traversal template. I eventually got closer to the solution, but I couldn't get to a complete and fully optimized implementation within the given time. This was the point where I felt the interview slipping away a little. The problem itself wasn't impossible, but under interview pressure I wasn't able to make the right observation quickly enough. The interviewer continued asking questions and gave me some hints, but I still couldn't bring the solution to a point where I was fully confident in the code. The rest of the round was mainly around the same problem and my approach. There wasn't much focus on other CS subjects. Result After the second technical round, I waited for the final update. Unfortunately, I wasn't selected for the SWE Internship. It was definitely disappointing, especially because the opportunity came directly through my performance in Google Big Code and I had already made it through the recruiter discussion and first technical round. But the experience itself was really valuable. The biggest thing I learned was that being good at competitive programming and getting a strong contest rank doesn't automatically mean every interview problem will feel easy. In the actual interview, the ability to communicate your thought process, identify the key observation and implement it cleanly under time pressure matters a lot. The second-round tree problem especially showed me that I needed to work more on unfamiliar tree problems rather than only practicing common patterns. Still, getting a recruiter invite after finishing around 1500 in Big Code and going through Google's technical interview process was a great experience. The process gave me a much better idea of the level expected in a Google SWE interview and gave me a few things to work on for the next opportunity.